


Tell Me We'll Never Get Used To It (Choose Your Last Words)

by Unknown



Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Abuse, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, broken!Derek, dark!stiles, deep and dark, light sadism and masochism if you squint, like triggers galore, or if you just see it that way, some kind of unhealthy love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 12:30:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unknown/pseuds/Unknown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'But more frequently I was finding myself sleepless and he was running out of lullabies/ Sometimes love is not enough, the road gets tough, I don't know why.'</p><p>Stiles is alone. Derek is alone. They decide to be not-alone together. This is not, necessarily, a good thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me We'll Never Get Used To It (Choose Your Last Words)

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGERS:  
> Self-harm  
> Abuse  
> Violent Kinks  
> Rough Sex  
> Suicide Attempt  
> Character Encouraging Suicide  
> Depression  
> Sadism/Masochism, I guess if you look at it like that
> 
> Also title/quotes are taken from Richard Siken's 'Crush' and Lana del Rey's 'Born To Die'. 
> 
> "Caring is not an advantage" line is taken from Season 2 of BBC's Sherlock.
> 
> If there's anything else that's triggering in here, PLEASE PLEASE LET ME KNOW.
> 
> Not beta'd.
> 
> Also, don't ask me why I wrote this. I was in a bad place when I started writing it, then got better and left well enough alone. But the I decided that I should finish and post it. It's not a happy story, not really, I don't think. Though the end, if seen in a certain light (like the dim, flickering ones most frequently found in rundown motel bathrooms) might lend a certain comfort to it as a whole.

**" _Eventually, something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor, crying."_**

  
Stiles doesn't fall to the floor crying when his dad dies.  
  
He's seventeen and three quarters, almost done with high school and officially an orphan. His mom's life insurance paid off the house, so he's fine there. His dad's life insurance will support him for a while, so he's fine there.  
  
He feels like his head is about to explode. He's not so fine  _there_.  
  
Because what the hell? He's alone now, alone of course, in an empty house with empty things and he seriously contemplates the possibility of burning everything he can't stand in a bonfire in his backyard. He gets as far as gathering everything up and shoving things into boxes but then he stops, the job half-way finished, like everything else in his life. What's the point? So what he's burned it all, so what he's gotten it out of his system? Doesn't mean the pain will go away. Doesn't mean any of it will disappear.  
  
He finishes senior year off and opts out of college, which means everyone leaves him behind. Scott goes off to LA with Allison, Lydia and Jackson head off to San Diego, Danny tagging along. Stiles doesn't know what the Pack does, doesn't know what Derek does, doesn't really care. He knows what  _he's_ doing.  _He's_ camping out at home, in an empty house that's not quite a home anymore, hasn't been since his mother died, had lost all warmth when his dad finally got snuffed out of the world, like the unimportant candle that he was.  
  
Stiles knows what  _he's_ doing: he's refusing to move on.  


* * *

  
_" **Feet don't fail me now. Take me to the finish line.**_ **_All my heart, it breaks every step_ _that I take_ _,b_ _ut I'm hoping that the gates,they'll tell me that you're mine."_ **  


The Pack leaves Derek.

College, they say. A future, they say. Living life, they say. Excuses, all of it. Bullshit that they feed him and bullshit that he refuses to swallow. Oh, he let's them go, he doesn't need them, not really. He's been alone a long while, hasn't he? Faced the day by himself, with no one but his reflection and heartbeat to keep him company.   
  
So they leave and they take his power and influence with them and then it's just Derek in a dirty, run-down subway with nothing to his name but a pair of ratty jeans and twenty dollars in ones and fives. Pathetic, really. He might just like it that way. An Alpha reduced to an Omega. My, my how far he's fallen.  
  
Until he smells it.  
  
That familiar scent of anxiety mixed with the eccstatic, a hint of oppresion and desperation, a scent that's always put him on edge and made him want to tear it's owners heart out in a loving manner, just to show them what it means to be wanted that way. He's never done it, but it's just the two of them, alone in the town now, in the woods one might say. Just a few minutes walk to an old familiar door, into an old familiar house and he could be... not-alone. Not complete, but not-alone.   
  
Derek goes.  


* * *

  
_" **I'm battling monsters, I'm pulling you out of the burning buildings."**_   


Derek finds Stiles sitting in a small puddle of his own blood. He smelled the blood from the doorway, but took his time coming. He has all day, as far as he's concerned.   
  
He can't see any knife or razor blade that Stiles could have used. But then Stiles sees him, his eyes blown wide from pain, or maybe delirum, and he smiles a manic grin up at Derek and his teeth are stained red. Derek plops down beside him, his jeans soaking up the small pudle near Stiles' left wrist. He's legitimately gnawed on himself.   
  
"Teeth aren't good for cutting," Stiles murmurs. "Why're you here?"  
  
Derek shrugs, picks up a wrist and slowly licks it clean. It's stopped bleeding. Stiles hadn't really gone all that deep; he'd been using his own teeth, after all. At some point, his body was going to kick in and tell him to fucking stop because it  _hurt_.  
  
"Huh," Stiles says, watching Derek do it to the other wrist, then drop them both in Stile's lap. "I hurt myself," he says absentmindedly.   
  
"Where's your Adderall?" Derek says instead. Stiles shrugs. He's misplaced the pill bottle. Too damn bad. He's been thinking of things to try now that his dad isn't here to stop him.  
  
In a moment of lucidity, Stiles pulls his knees up against his chest and wraps his hurt arms around them. He rests his chin on his knee caps and swallows audibly. "I  _hurt_ myself," he says again, this time a bit of disgust in his voice. "I  _hate_ this." There's a horrible feeling at the pit of his stomach that he wants to forget. He wants to forget it so badly, so much so that he feels sick with the want.  
  
He starts to shake. Derek notices. "What?"  
  
"I - " Stiles looks at him, tilting his head sideways. "Why're you here?"  
  
" _You're_ here," Derek says softly, like that makes all the sense in the world and it kind of does - because who can blame Derek for going to the one place that has someone who he can actually just  _be_ around? - so they leave it at that.   
  
Stiles gets up then, walks to his room shedding his clothes as he goes. Derek takes it as the invitation it's meant to be, watching as Stiles' pale body is revealed to him. Birthmarks splattered across his creamy, clean skin. Old scars leaving ragged edges in his flesh.  
  
It's as beautiful as it is ugly. Derek loves it yet hates it at the same time.   


* * *

_" **I feel so alone on a Friday night. Can you make it feel like home if I tell you you're mine?"**_

  
Stiles feels the hollow part in his soul that's been there since his mom died, grown when his dad died. Ripped his body apart when everyone else left and left Derek behind to try and fill it. Stiles is pretty sure Derek can't expand enough to fill it. That's okay. It's worth a try.  
  
Stiles can lie. Stiles can pretend for a night, that he wants this, that he's happy, that he's not completely alone. Ignore the hole in his being, the gaping one that refuses to close. He can lie for a bit, be in blissful, false ignorance. He could care less, just to feel something other than nothing. That's why he'd used his teeth; they're a lot duller, so they hurt more.  


* * *

  
**_"Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out 'you will be alone and the you will die.' So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog of non-definitive acts, something other than the description."_ **   


Derek fucks Stiles. He spreads him out on Stiles' bed, works his fingers into him quickly and then lines himself up with Stiles' entrance before he pushes in. He doesn't care that it's Stiles' first time, doesn't care that he's used barely enough lube, doesn't care that he's still half clothed, his shirt rucking up.   
  
Stiles' body is warm and soft. It sparks something in his chest that makes him want to fuck it all out of his system. Stiles offers that. Doesn't take it back. Let's him have his way. Encourages him, if anything. Pushes back and begs for it. It's all a farce, he knows it. They just need the release, something better than what they've had, something better than what they've been going through. The fact that  _this_ is something better would probably be depressing if they weren't already depressed.   
  
Derek is still alone. He and Stiles owe each other nothing and after this, he'll return to his dump of a condemned house and leave Stiles in the home that haunts him with the presence of people that don't exist anymore. And they'll be okay with that. It's not meant to be permanent, even if they're suffering is.  
  
Derek comes with a grunt and then Stiles does too, touching himself frantically. They lay there, Derek crushing Stiles into the bed's matress and he feels better, not powerful, but grounded. Stiles feels like something is finally taking the anxiety away, all that pressure sucking it out of him.   
  
Neither of them move until the sun starts to crawl across the room, morning making its debut. And then Derek leaves, let's Stiles lay in bed, closes the door to the boy's room and walks back through the woods to his old shell of a house.   
  
He punches the door when he gets there and doesn't walk inside.  


* * *

  
**_"Keep making me laugh, let's go get high. The road is long, we carry on, try to have fun in the meantime."_ **   


Stiles let's Derek come to him. They're the only connection either of them has left to the world, anyway. Stiles doesn't make an effort, would rather just forget, but Derek won't let him, so Stiles won't send him away because maybe he's doing him a mercy.   
  
Isn't he?  
  
Derek comes and Stiles is lying down on the grass in his backyard. He's staring at the sky, the clear blue sky. And it feels like it's smothering him. He wonders if Derek would smother him. Wonders if he could ever make himself ask, if Derek would kill him now or when he inevitably fell asleep in the sun.   
  
Derek sits beside him, doesn't speak, let's the silence speak for him. Stiles doesn't ask how he's been because he knows how Derek's been. Alone. Quiet, no one to talk to, to fill up the staggering silence. He probably doesn't know what to say to Stiles because he hasn't opened his mouth since that one time all those weeks ago that he came in the night and fucked the younger boy raw, until he couldn't think.   
  
And Stiles let him. He'll probably let him again. Just not right now. He wants to think right now.  
  
About his dad. But no, that's too much for right now. He wants to think of the hole in his chest and how it's gotten worse now that he's lost everything and spends the time that he's out in society telling everyone that he's alright. It's believable is the problem, not that he minds that they believe him. Everyone except Derek. It's an unspoken agreement that they won't talk about anything or to each other out in the open with other people to hear.   
  
They've got nothing to say that's appropriate for anyone else but themselves.  
  
"I don't want to talk about it," Stiles says a bit unnecessarily. Derek just nods, takes off his jacket and lays down in the grass beside him. He smells like sweat and earth. Like the forest. He smells like the smoke that's ingrained in the wood boards in that condemned piece of shit Derek can't and won't forget about.   
  
That's ok.  
  
"I don't want to listen to you talk about it," Derek admits and they lay in silence again. It's boring. Stiles feels his ADD build for the energy attacks he can't handle anymore.   
  
"Fuck me?"  
  
"In the grass? Out in the open?"  
  
"Yeah, why not." And Stiles flips over onto his stomach and lets the scratchy grass tickle his nose. He hears something unzip, let's Derek pull down his pants and go to town and this, this is so much better. So much better than laying around and waiting for something to happen. Derek finishes off, then finishes him off and they lay there again. Stiles wonders if they should shower, doesn't feel like anything especially spectacular just happened.   
  
"Get the fuck off of me. You're heavy," he mumbles and Derek freezes and starts to laugh. He laughs so hard he wheezes and Stiles flips over, his dick too sensitive for all this maltreatment, but he does it all the same. "The hell is your problem?" Because Derek looks like he's snapped or something.  
  
"You sounded  _normal_ ," Derek says between giggles and yeah, that's something the Stiles of Old would say. _'You're heavy'._  It makes Stiles feel sick to his stomach. What right does he have to be getting better when someone he loves is buried 6 feet under and the only true friend he's ever had has left him to wallow in it all?  
  
"It's not funny," he says, getting up, but Derek pulls him back down and he falls and flails until his face is mashed against Derek's neck and he stays there because he likes what Derek smells like and Derek's breathing is going haywire like he thinks Stiles is going to dissipate which is stupid because he's flesh and bones and if he were going to do that he'd have done it already.   
  
They don't move, and Stiles falls asleep. And when he wakes up, he's in bed, still in his sex-slick clothes and Derek is asleep on the floor.

* * *

  
_" **I woke up in the morning and I didn't want anything, didn't do anything, couldn't do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything."**_   


Derek sometimes wonders why he isn't dead, kind of wishes he was. His family is dead. Peter doesn't count. He's not even himself and he disappeared a while ago anyway. Laura is dead. His mother and father are dead. His cousins are dead. His younger brothers and sisters are dead. What's the point?  
  
His Pack isn't dead; his Pack left him for something better. But what else was he supposed to expect from those who were turned and not born into it?  
  
It's disgusting how he wakes up first on the floor of Stiles' bed and then, steadily, in his bed, beside the sleeping boy, who isn't really a boy anymore because he was stupid enough to run with wolves and that fucks a person up, no matter how fucked up you were previously. He wakes up and chokes on smoke and ash, he wakes up and feels himself burning. He wakes up and screams bloody fucking murder and it doesn't make sense that he's not dead, so he jumps out of bed, jumps out the window, changes into his wolf form and runs until he forgets he's human, until he forgets that he was just in bed with a human, that he just pressed a soft body into a mattress and claimed it and that body didn't even know it.  
  
He won't ever know it if Derek has his way.  
  
He always returns after mornings like these. His blood pounding in his ears, his heart beating erratically and it's so ugly, the sound of life is so ugly. He wants it to just choke off, wants to end it but he wouldn't know where to start, doesn't know if there's anything he's leaving behind and it bothers him and makes his skin crawl so he just walks back inside the little house that he's taken to instead of his condemned shack and sits in the kitchen until Stiles comes down.   
  
His heart is still thudding in his head, his heart beating out a staccato rhythm that Derek swears will be the death of him and he doesn't understand. He holds his breath, let's his body slow but then it's picking back up and panicking and Derek doesn't understand. He's not breathing. Nothing is making sense.   
  
Except that Stiles is punching him in the face and he realizes that it wasn't his heart picking up, it was Stiles'. He's tuned into Stiles just as much as he's tuned into his own body, Derek knows. Stiles had been panicking, not him. Why is a whole different story.  
  
Derek looks up from where he's sprawled to the floor and Stiles punches him again. The cut to his lip will heal and his black eye will fade by the afternoon. The pain in Stiles' face won't be gone for a while though.   
  
"No," the younger boy grates out. "No, you don't get to just hold your breath and hope it kills you because then I'm-" And Stiles stops and Derek knows he's going to say alone, but instead Stiles just bites his tongue so hard Derek can smell the blood and goes to make coffee.  
  
Derek doesn't get up off the floor for a long while. 

* * *

  
_" **Tried to take what I could get, scared I couldn't find all the answers."**_   


"Genim," Stiles says one day where they're just sitting on the couch. The TV has a hole in the screen from Stiles kicking it the other day and Derek doesn't care because he watches Stiles now instead and it's a lot better than any television show.  
  
"What?" Derek says. He didn't hear anything before that. Maybe there hadn't been anything before that.  
  
"My real name is Genim," Stiles says again. Stiles is outstretched, his feet on Derek's lap. "Stiles is a shortened version of Stilinski. My mother named me after her dad. My dad let her. He let her do pretty much anything, those days." Stiles is staring at the ceiling. "I hate them for leaving."  
  
"I hate my entire family for leaving," Derek says calmly.  
  
"I hate you for being the only one still here," Stiles says and there's no bitterness in his tone, just honesty and truth, and maybe the phrase means something different. Maybe Stiles hates that no one else had the strength to stay but him.   
  
"I hate that you're the only one too stupid to keep me around," Derek says just as honest, with the same double meaning. And maybe Derek hates that Stiles could get hurt, that someone more capable of dealing with him isn't around to be stupid enough.   
  
Stiles shifts. "When are you leaving then?"  
  
It hits Derek that this is the reason Stiles has been so needy this week. Every other hour Stiles was begging to be screwed, to be the one pounding into Derek, to have Derek mark him up with his claws and dull teeth. This is the reason he's been spilling facts about himself, something they've never really done. He thinks Derek is getting ready to leave and he won't let it take him by surprise this time.  
  
So Derek answers honestly, "Whenever you send me away." It's the truth. That's all he has left to give, anyway.  
  
Stiles looks at him now. "And if I tell you I never will?"  
  
Derek shrugs. "Then I guess I'm not going anywhere." Stiles kicks him in the jaw then, and Derek feels a bruise blossoming on his chin. He tightens his hand on Stiles' calf and waits until the other boy shifts, uncomfortable with the pressure. He doesn't ask why, but Stiles knows he wants an answer.  
  
"I like to watch you heal," Stiles says quietly. "It's the only beautiful thing left out here, watching your skin fade from black to purple to yellow and back to your normal tone. Watching a cut close and scab and scar then disappear. I like it."  
  
Derek swallows. He shows Stiles his clear palm then slits it with a claw and watches Stiles' pupils blow wide as he watches the transformation just as he described it seconds ago.  
  
"Do it - do it again?" Stiles asks weakly, sitting up and crawling over into Derek's lap to watch him mutilate himself and then heal as if nothing had been done in the first place.   
  
They stay doing it until Stiles falls asleep, his face buried in Derek's neck, his teeth pinching the sensitive skin there. Derek can't find it in himself to mind. 

* * *

  
_" **But damn if there isn't anything sexier than a slender boy with a handgun, a fast car, a bottle of pills."**_   


Stiles finds his Adderall.   
  
And he takes it. All of it. It's not a hard choice, not even a conscious one. He's looking for a sock under his bed and ends up finding the pill bottle. It takes less than a minute to stand up and upturn the rest of what's left into his mouth, to swallow the chalky pills down dry. It takes a bit, but everything get's hazy and the air seems thick and Stiles lets himself sway then collapse onto the bed.  
  
He stays that way, the plastic bottle in his hand, for a while. He stays that way until Derek finds him like that, eyes glazed over, mouth moving but not really forming any words. There's a moment when Derek sniffs the air around him, smells the drugs in his belly and then snatches the bottle, throws it across the room.  
  
Stiles expects him to leave. Kind of wants him to, actually, but Derek growls and lays beside him, tucking Stiles up against his body and Stiles is too drugged up to protest. He wonders if he'll die, or if Derek will drive him out to the hospital to get his stomach pumped before that happens. He doesn't know which he wants more, but it might be the hospital, because that would mean Derek would have to drag him out to the car and he loves the Camaro in that moment like nothing he's ever loved.  
  
He thinks it's because Derek drives it and Derek is still around, Derek hasn't left, won't leave until Stiles tells him to and Stiles makes a note to himself to never, ever tell Derek to leave, even in his current state of delirium.   
  
Stiles drools on Derek's chest and he feels like he can't breathe. Derek's saying something about not dying, asking if he wants water, if he's going to throw up and then Derek seems to get an idea, sits Stiles up. The next thing he knows, Derek is forcing the first three fingers of his right hand down Stiles' throat and he's gagging around them. That coupled with Derek's jerky movements to sit him up make Stiles choke and then vomit, and he sees white where his pills mix with his bile and he keeps vomiting, let's it all out and Derek isn't rubbing his back, he's smacking it, bruising it, he's angry.  
  
He tosses Stiles back onto the bed and cleans up the mess and he's still yelling when he gets back to the room. Derek looks like he’s going to break down and when Stiles finds it in himself to sit up, Derek grabs him by the wrists so tight that he knows he’ll have bruises. Something ignites in him, that he wants the bruises and it’s only when he shakes that feeling off that he finally listens to what Derek is saying.

“If I don’t get to die, _you_ don’t get to die, _don’t you fucking dare_ , how dare you,” he says altogether. “ _How dare you_?” Then Derek isn’t saying anything and he walks out. He walks out and Stiles is left in bed. He doesn’t feel bad, per say. It’s his life, he’ll make his own decisions, thanks. If he wants it, he’ll do it, and Derek can fuck off if he’s so torn up about it.

It hits him then that Derek **is** torn up about it, and that he hasn’t had that… in a long time. Stiles gets the urge to exploit the feeling, silently plans to when Derek comes around tomorrow. He craves the feeling and so he waits and waits.

* * *

**_“Come and take a walk on the wild side. Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain, you like your girls insane.”_ **

 

Derek doesn’t come back the next day. Or the day after that. He doesn’t come back for a week and Stiles takes to screaming at random hours of the day. He starts to call Derek, leaving threatening messages, texts him until he gets so frustrated he throws his phone at the wall and it explodes into a million pieces. He picks up the sharp parts, letting them cut up his fingers so he can distract himself from the thoughts racing through his mind.

He has no Adderall. He has no friends or family. Most importantly of all, he has no Derek.

Stiles screams some more, until his throat it raw and he’s lost his voice.

On the third day, he slams his head into window until the glass cracks and he’s sure he’s got a concussion. Then he goes to sleep and prays something horrible happens, hopes for it. He’s terrified, completely terrified because he had Derek, he never realized it, but he had Derek and now he has nothing. It’s the most terrifying thing he’s ever felt. He’s actually alone and it’s driving him insane. There’s no one to tell him to shut up, to slap him when he turns horrible, to fuck him when he gets antsy. Derek had been so in tune with his broken self and neither of them had noticed until Derek had left.

Derek’s only gone a week; to Stiles, it’d mind as well have been a century.

Stiles hears the front door open and close and he hopes it’s a hobo or scum, someone that won’t feel too bad about killing him. He’ll make sure they have to, because there’s nothing for him. He’d never understood that Derek had been _it_ , holding him down, until he’d been gone and Stiles had gone flying off the bars. It’s scary and he wants Derek back as much as he wants him to stay the fuck away. This way, he figures, if he dies, he doesn’t have to choose.

He attacks whoever it is that comes in, closes his eyes and tosses himself down the stairs. He hurts himself and collides with something familiar and sturdy. He’s still surprised when he sees Derek. Stiles screams, he screams one long continuous wail and Derek doesn’t even flinch. Stiles scrambles off of him and screams then starts to destroy the living room they’re in. He kicks the coffee table over and shatters the glass table-top; he smashes the lamps and rips fluff out of the couch pillows. He roars in anger, and hate, and anguish and maybe even grief.

“You’re insane,” Derek says softly as Stiles yells again and collapses onto the floor in a heap. Derek wraps his arms around him anyway. Truth is, he doesn’t care, kind of likes Stiles this way. He’s too fucked up for it to work any other way. He looks Stiles in the eye and then kisses his mouth hard. There’s a storm brewing, but it’s not outside, it’s in their hearts and their minds. The lighting has struck them both and they’re stuck together where they sit, every heartbeat shared, ever touch static and electric.

Derek’s been away too long. And he regrets every minute of it.

* * *

**_“Sorry about the blood in your mouth.  I wish it was mine.”_ **

 

Stiles rips himself away from Derek and tries to hit him, but Derek holds his wrists, hard enough to bruise. Stiles likes the feeling of being bruised, but at the same time he hates the fact that he’s being stopped from wreaking havoc. Derek sits on his legs so he doesn’t kick him and so Stiles tries to use his teeth. He bites at Derek’s skin in frustration and anger, biting the questions that he can’t ask, doesn’t know _how_ to ask.

_Why’d you come back? Why couldn’t you just leave me alone? Why did you leave me at all?_

Derek pulls him away though, and Stiles realizes he has missed that challenge, and so has Derek. So instead, he bites his own mouth in frustration at his feelings. He doesn’t want to want Derek, doesn’t want to need him, but it’s come to that moment. He bites his mouth until Derek notices and grabs his jaw to stop him, but it’s a bit late for that. Stiles lets the blood dribble out of his mouth and over his lips, slide down his chin and soak into his shirt.

“Why?” he asks, and Derek wipes the blood from his mouth, letting him go once he’s realized that he’s calmed down a bit.

He’d left because Stiles had decided that he preferred death over his company. Derek had left and expected to come back to a body to bury somewhere in the woods, but instead, instead Stiles is alive and he doesn’t understand why. He’d stayed away because he’d wanted Stiles not to feel guilty in the end, because he’d realized that although Stiles is _his_ in a sense, Stiles’ life is his own and Derek can’t do anything about it, and shouldn’t. What right does he have to inflict the curse of living upon someone else? _But this?_ What Stiles is doing now, screaming and asking questions that Derek doesn’t know how to answer in words, he didn’t expect this.

“Why what?”

“Why’d you leave, why’d you come back? Why couldn’t you just leave and be done with it?” Stiles yells, burying his face in his knees where they’re pulled up against his chest. “You said you’d leave when I sent you away, but I didn’t and-”

“Yes you did,” Derek says tiredly.

“What?” Stiles asks wetly. “I didn’t, don’t you put words in my mouth!”

“You didn’t say it, you did it. You wanted to die, which meant that you’d be away from me. I gave you space to do it,” Derek says softly. He closes his eyes and lays down on the floor, ignoring the pain of glass stabbing into his back.

Stiles is quiet for a change, whispers, “Oh,” and then he starts to laugh, he laughs and Derek looks over to him, where his mouth and teeth are stained red, blood crusty and dry everywhere. Stiles is giggling and he lays down next to Derek, still laughing. “You were gonna let me… even if you’d stay alone.”

“I wouldn’t last long,” Derek concedes, eyes closed as Stiles laughs maniacally beside him, teeth clamped around the skin on his collarbone comfortingly. He likes the feel of pain; it grounds him, it’s what he knows best, the only consistent thing in his life, and so it’s good.

“You love me,” Stiles says, sobering up fast.

“Something like that,” Derek says thoughtfully. “I don’t think that you and I are creatures capable of love anymore, do you?”

Stiles doesn’t answer, just bites down harder, feeling happier than he has in a long time. Derek would let him kill himself if that would make it easier. Derek gave him time. Derek has some fucked up bond with him that he can’t do anything about. The thoughts, _the possibilities_ are intoxicating. But they’re also terrifying, because Stiles is stuck in the same boat and he can’t do anything about it either.

“You’re so pretty when you heal,” Stiles says, almost absentmindedly, lying amid the broken glass and furniture.

“I wish I could bleed and stay bleeding,” Derek admits, like they used to in the worst of times. “I wish your blood was mine.” And he wills Stiles to understand, to understand that he can’t leave this world like Stiles can, that neither of them has the drive to end him anymore. He wills Stiles to understand that he doesn’t want to be alone, but he can survive that way if he needs to. He wants Stiles’ blood as his so he can leave, but he also wants it as his so he can satisfy the craving his wolf has for flesh and blood, to rip something apart and totally destroy it, to emaciate something living.

But Stiles isn’t really living; he’s just alive. They both are.

* * *

**_“This is the last time. Cos you and I, we were born to die.”_ **

 

“What are we doing?” Stiles asks softly. Beside him on the floor, Derek shrugs.

“I don’t know. I don’t actually care either,” he admits.

“If the others ever found us like this…” Stiles trails off and finds he doesn’t care much about that, either. “Wanna go?” Derek looks at him oddly, a weird sort of emotion blooming in his chest. Stiles could be asking him one of two things. He’s hoping for the second one.

“Where?” he asks, wary and weary.

“Who cares?” Stiles says sitting up. “I don’t actually know, and isn’t that the point, not to know anything? In the end, really, we’re all just going to die anyway, why rush? We will always, always, always die,” Stiles says, his voice going soft and hoarse in the end. “Always. That’s what we were born to do. Some of us just got luckier than others and left the party early.”

Derek sits up and licks his lips. “Let me fuck you,” he asks softly. “And then I’ll give you an answer.”

“As long as you promise this is the last time,” Stiles says, looking down at the floor where the light-bulb is in shards.

“What? Last time for what?” Derek says. He’s not panicked, he’s lost. He knows Stiles can’t survive with his brain, doesn’t want to go back on the pills that repress everything that he is and everything that he feels because those are his emotions to express and those are his qualities, virtuous and vile, to be.

“The last time that you ask permission,” Stiles says, and he gets up, walks out of the destroyed living room. “Because my answer’s not going to change,” he says over his shoulder. “And it makes me want to smack the civilized manners out of you,” Stiles admits as he makes his way up the stairs.

“No one’s stopping you,” Derek says, following. When he gets into the bedroom, Derek finds Stiles already stripped, bruises and scars that weren’t there before covering him. He’s got this twisted smile that, in the wrong light, looks innocent and beautiful. Derek likes it very much; it’s honest and true, unlike most things in the world.

“I know; I never said there was.”

* * *

**_“Says to himself, The boy’s no good. The boy is just no good. but he takes you in his arms and pushes your flesh around to see if you could ever be ugly to him…And the boy who loves you the wrong way is filthy. And the boy who loves you the wrong way keeps weakening. You thought if you handed over your body he’d do something interesting…”_ **

 

They do leave, and when the Pack and Scott and Allison and Jackson and Lydia, and all the rest of them, come back to check on their respective parties, they find a burnt out shell of a house that no one’s been in for months and an empty, destroyed house that has the feel of desolation and darkness to it.

They never end up finding either of them. Then again, they don’t search for too long. They figured as much; understood at least, that some things need to happen, and that some things are better left well enough alone. Stiles and Derek are one of them.

Somewhere, and they’re never too sure where because that would ruin the illusion, Derek and Stiles drive. They fuck anywhere they can reach each other, anywhere they can get away with it, and in some places they can’t and shouldn’t. Stiles sports his bruises and cuts with a proud smile and a glint in his eyes, daring anyone to question it. Derek wears his unblemished skin with the look of a martyr, like his mere existence is a sin and he likes it that way.

They stay with each other for all the wrong reasons, and burst apart for all the right ones. It’s the most wrong thing they will ever do and the most right thing they will ever miss, and it doesn’t matter much, because they’ve got nothing else left. Caring, in their case, is not an advantage, so they don’t bother to waste their time.

In a way, they are two red strings of fate, unfortunately, knotted together, refusing to snap no matter how frayed they get. They can find peace in one thing and one thing only: that if they do snap, at least, at the very least, they’ll be snapping together.

And they can find nothing in the world better than that.

* * *

 

**_“You do this, you do. You take the things you love, and you tear them apart... We are all going forward. None of us are going back."_ **

**Author's Note:**

> The last quote that's standing alone is two quotes mashed up, one from Primer for the Small Weird Loves and the other from Snow and Dirty Rain.
> 
> My own little mini-playlist for this short fic is called _Primer for the Small Weird Loves_ ; yes, after the poem by Richard Siken.
> 
> There's like 5 songs:
> 
> \- Born To Die: Lana del Rey  
> \- Rolled Together: The Antlers  
> \- Little Hell: City & Colour  
> \- Crystallize: Lindsey Sterling  
> \- Autoclave: The Mountain Goats
> 
> The poems I took quotes from are all in Crush by Richard Siken and some of the titles that I remember are, Primer for the Small Weird Loves; Little Beast; Straw House, Straw Dog; Wishbone; Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out; Scheherazade; and Snow and Dirty Rain.
> 
> I suggest and recommend that everyone reads Crush. It's an amazing book of moving poetry. Desperate and harsh and truthful. It is so very real and no one can go wrong with reading it.
> 
> Either way, hope you enjoyed.


End file.
